


Sanctuary

by talefeathers



Category: Romeo And Juliet - All Media Types, Romeo And Juliet - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Brotherly Love, Brothers, Fluff, Gen, Reunions, but there are NO zombies in this fic, only love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-01
Updated: 2016-10-01
Packaged: 2018-08-18 23:05:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8179174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: It has been three years since Mercutio was separated from his brother when he finally arrives at the fabled "sanctuary."  Since it doesn't look like he'll be leaving this place any time soon, he decides to go looking for Valentine one last time.





	1. Chapter 1

Mercutio was still trying to comprehend that the sanctuary was real -- that there were so many uninfected in one place. It made his chest feel tight, as if the air had gone too thin. He stumbled through registration like -- well, like one of the biters, for lack of a better comparison. He had to re-spell his name for the man taking it down three times. 

The place was like a camp site, a hodgepodge of trailers and tents that eventually gave way to sturdier wooden structures, all gated in with a rotating guard for the rare biter that wandered this far north. The biters, however, seemed to have figured out that they didn't do so well in the cold, so the guard and the gate were little more than security blankets. 

It was an oasis; that was certain. But it was still one person shy of perfection.

"You're missing somebody."

Mercutio jumped out of his daze when a teenage girl addressed him, her intelligent face framed by a violet hijab. He tried to smile.

"Isn't everyone these days?"

"Fair enough," the girl said with a shrug. "But you have a different look to you. You still believe your missing somebody is alive somewhere, right?”

Mercutio didn't answer, but something about his face must have, because the girl nodded. 

"Not everyone these days has that hope," she said.

Mercutio dropped his eyes. He knew that well enough.

"Who is it you're looking for?" the girl asked, dipping her head to gently reclaim his gaze. "There are a _lot_ of people here, and I help in the kitchen, so I've met most of them. If they’re here, I'll know."

Mercutio was silent for a moment. He'd stopped asking after Valentine months ago. Not because he'd stopped believing that Val was alive, but because his heart had grown weary of disappointment. No one had seen him; no one had any information on him. And everyone, whether they said so or not, assumed that he was long dead.

Still, the girl was right: there were a lot of people here. And it wasn't as if Mercutio was going anywhere else in the foreseeable future.

"He'd be sixteen now." 

He swallowed while that sank in. Then he removed his backpack and began digging for the photograph he’d swiped impulsively from the refrigerator in the chaos of evacuation. 

"His hair’s a little lighter than mine, and a little curlier. And he had glasses, like -- like these fuckin trendy Warby Parker ones, with the clear plastic frames? And -- and I guess I don't know how tall he'd be now or anything, but --"

Mercutio found the photo (he and Valentine pulling rubber faces on either side of their uncle at some long-forgotten black tie event), and held it up to the girl for appraisal.

"He was always kinda skinny. And he can be kinda quiet, but he’s _really_ funny. And he’d be a good runner; he used to run track and stuff. And he -- he knows everything about the stars. Like, constellations and shit? Like you could point to anything in the night sky and he'd tell you -- he'd know --"

Mercutio wasn't sure when he'd started crying; he only noticed once the ache of it stopped words in his throat. He realized that the wound had begun to scab over in spite of himself, and it bled anew with every memory he called forth to conjure his brother’s image for this girl. He flicked a thumb beneath each eye with a feeble grin.

The girl said something then, too quietly for Mercutio to hear, her brown eyes saucer-wide.

"I'm sorry?" he croaked.

"Mercutio," she said again. "You're Mercutio."

For about four seconds Mercutio wondered, heart deflating, what the fuck that had to do with anything.

On the fifth, it hit him like a bullet.

"You know Val," he said.

She nodded, a wild laugh bursting from her grin.

“I know Val.”


	2. Chapter 2

The girl introduced herself as Juliet as she led Mercutio through the bustling compound, pulling him unselfconsciously by the hand.

“My cousin and I ran into Valentine in Padua, right after you two were separated,” she explained. She threw smiles and waves to almost everyone they passed as they walked, and they returned her greetings with warmth.

“He didn’t say a word for the first week he was with us,” she continued. “We figured he had really seen some shit, you know? And then, when he finally _did_ tell us what happened, Tybalt -- that’s my cousin -- Tybalt and I were like ‘Shit, there’s no way his brother made it,’ you know? But Val didn’t wanna hear it. He always said that if he could make it out, so could you.”

Juliet turned a raised eyebrow on him.

“Guess he told us, huh?”

Mercutio, for once, didn’t trust himself to speak, so he only nodded. A distant clamor he hadn’t been able to place before resolved itself into hammering and sawing and drilling as they made their way past the tents and trailers and into the actual buildings. The sanctuary, Mercutio saw now, was still largely under construction, and people fitting every description hung from it like ornaments, finishing the job. He studied every one of them, looking for the right combination of lanky limbs and buoyant curls.

He was beginning to worry that they wouldn’t recognize each other -- that three years had made them strangers -- when a voice separated itself from the surrounding buzz. Not because it was louder or closer, but because it filled a three-year gap in Mercutio’s periphery.

“No, it’s not sturdy enough,” the voice said. Its vowels snapped like Mercutio’s did, like his uncle’s had a lifetime ago. “If we put another one right there that would help distribute some of the weight, and then --”

“Valentine!” Juliet shouted, waving toward a small group standing next to a mostly finished cottage on their right.

The boy who looked up to answer Juliet’s call had a scar, a bone-white starburst knotted into his right temple. He was almost tall, but not quite. He was skinny, but not to the point of gangliness. His posture was just shy of perfect, and the top of his head was a tangle of loose, golden-brown curls. He wore a pair of taped-together, once-trendy Warby Parker glasses.

He was no longer the kid Mercutio had lost, but he was Valentine. Every inch.

“I found this weird dog up by the front gate,” Juliet continued, lifting Mercutio’s hand into the air between them. “Can we keep him?”

There was a stutter, then, a sort of hiccup when Valentine’s eyes met Mercutio’s. Emotions flickered across Valentine’s face, wariness and disbelief tangling with relief and the wild, giddy joy that eventually won out. He huffed a hoarse laugh.

“Mercutio?”

“No, it’s Tilda Swinton,” Mercutio shot back, compelled by the joy expanding in his own chest, the words tumbling over his laughter like water over stone. “Jesus, I know it's been a while, but come on.”

“Okay, to be fair, _not_ an easy distinction to make,” Valentine replied, as naturally as if no time had passed between them at all. He broke from the group beside the cottage and began to jog toward Mercutio and Juliet. “Also, you were introduced as a dog, so I had sort of mentally prepared for that.”

“Smartass,” Mercutio said, releasing Juliet’s hand and doing his part to close the distance.

Valentine’s expression softened then, just the slightest bit. He stopped when they were within arm’s reach of one another, smiling easily, and shrugged.

“I learned from the best,” he said.

There was another of those stutters, a hovering moment in which the two of them looked at each other and let the fact of their proximity settle and dissolve.

Mercutio didn’t know who reached for whom first, but in the next moment he was holding and being held. He locked one arm around Val’s back and pulled Val’s head down onto his shoulder with the other. Valentine’s wiry arms crushed him so tightly that he almost couldn’t breathe.

“Hey, hey,” Mercutio shushed as Valentine began to sob. He rubbed circles into his brother’s back and carded fingers through his hair, murmuring soft comfort through his own tears. 

“It’s okay,” he said, over and over. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

For a long time, there was only that: the hot tears on his shoulder and the warm whispers in his throat.

“I _missed_ you,” Valentine said, muffled into the fabric of Mercutio’s shirt.

“I missed you, too,” Mercutio replied. He pressed a rough kiss to the scar on Valentine’s temple. “I missed you so much.”

A voice Mercutio didn’t recognize interjected then, quietly but with feeling:

“Holy shit.”

Mercutio looked up to find that a boy with sharp features now stood beside Juliet, towering over her. The wide, brown eyes with which he regarded Mercutio, however, matched hers exactly. The cousin she’d mentioned earlier. Tybalt.

Juliet was nodding, eyes shining; she must have just told him who Mercutio was.

“Holy _shit,”_ Tybalt repeated, cracking into a smile that made Mercutio’s heart lurch.

“Do you mind?” Valentine croaked without looking up. “We’re having a moment.”

“No, by all means,” Tybalt said. “Let me know when you’re done, though. I wanna know how your brother survived the zombie death gauntlet you described.”

“Oh, that’s an easy one,” Mercutio cut in. “Power of positive thinking.”

Tybalt groaned.

“Is it as hard to get a straight answer from you as it is to get one from Val, then?” he asked.

“You have no idea,” Mercutio said, tossing Tybalt a saucy wink.

Tybalt turned red to the roots of his hair. Juliet clapped both hands over a grin, turning raised eyebrows on her cousin. 

Valentine dissolved into helpless torrents of laughter -- an unbridled, gasping fit that shook his whole body.

And Mercutio, for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime, felt something like home.


End file.
